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The Electoral College is stacked against the South

November 30, 2009 — How many times have you heard that a candidate can't win the Electoral College without winning the South, only to find somebody prevails by only taking a handful of states below the Mason-Dixon Line?  Well, you may be surprised to learn that the South is largely disenfranchised by the Electoral College.  In layman's terms, Dixie is getting gypped out of a lot of votes in the Presidential Election.

Most Southerners I talk to about the subject don't even realize what's happened.  After all, they have some of the largest states in the Electoral College, like Texas (34), Florida (27), Georgia (15) and North Carolina (15).  Take those four alone and you're about a third of the way to the White House.

But I recently did an exercise with my students to see which states are underrepresented in the Electoral College.  In general, big states get a bad bargain, but specifically, it's the large Southern states that get the short end of the stick.

Take Texas, with those 34 Electoral College votes (second in the nation).  But divide that by their population of 24-plus million and they have 703,000 or so residents for every Electoral College vote.  Sure, little old Vermont only has a measly three Electoral College votes, but they actually get one vote on Election Day for every 207,000 residents.

You may think that's an exception, right?  You'd be wrong on that.  Delaware has one Electoral College vote for every 288,500 residents, while one such vote exists for every 675,000 Floridians.  Isn't there some "one person one vote" deal somewhere in the Constitution?  Well, Electoral College votes are distributed by the number of representatives each state gets, plus two votes for both Senators.  The latter certainly contributes to these disparities. 

But the South gets extra harsh treatment with this system.  Texas has the most residents per Electoral College vote, even though California is the most populous state.  Even though New York has twice as many Electoral College votes as Georgia, the Peach State has one E.C. vote for every 636,000-plus residents, while N.Y. has one vote for every 622,500 citizens of its state.

So the states that have the worst deal (most residents per Presidential vote) are Texas (1st), Florida (2nd), Georgia (5th), North Carolina (8th) and Virginia (9th).  Massachusetts has 200,000 more residents than Tennessee, but the Volunteer State has more residents per Electoral College vote, diluting the state's potential strength.  No Southern state is in the top ten category of fewest residents per Presidential vote.

If Mississippi got as many votes as Rhode Islanders (one for every 264,500 residents), it would nearly double its Electoral College strength.  Louisiana would get more votes than North Carolina does today.  Georgia would have at least 36 Electoral College votes.  Texas would have more than 90 Presidential votes.  Maybe Democrats would stop ignoring the region in general, if the system didn't resemble the BCS.

Thanks to Curt Ellison, Carmilla Harris, Riley Hill, Jatara King, Elissa Marks, Taylor Ours, Andy Page, Janette Pencle, Linwood Roberds, Knox Robinson, Catherine Rodriguez, Taylor Smith, Stephen Spivey, Clay Wages and Madison Wilson, They are LaGrange College undergraduates who contributed to the research for this column.